Apple’s iPhone and iPad shipments of touch screen displays has caused the market for touch controller integrated circuits (ICs) to almost triple in size during a five year span.

According to an IHS iSuppli Display Electronics topical report shipments of touch controller ICs are set to reach 2.4 billion units in 2015, up from 865 million in 2010. This year alone, shipments will surge 28 percent to 1.7 billion units, with strong double-digit growth projected for the next two years before the rate of expansion slows slightly in 2015.

Randy Lawson, principal analyst for display & consumer electronics at his said the expansion in touch controller IC shipments is due to the growing number of devices that employ touch technology. He said that Apple almost single-handedly ignited the market for touch in 2007 when it introduced the iPhone.

iPhone featured a multi-touch screen based on a projected capacitive touch technology. Since the appearance of the iPhone, many other smartphone manufacturers have jumped on the bandwagon by deploying sophisticated touch sensors for their products.

As the fruity cargo cult Apple does rather well out of the boom in mobile, analysts continue to talk about the death of the PC.

Under a headline Shipments of Mobile PCs in China Forecast to Outpace Desktops in 2013, research from DisplaySearch claims that mobile is going to do well in China. However if you look at its figures most of the growth predicted has come from mobiles being lumped together with conventional PCs.

In the section marked mobile PC's DisplaySearch says that “following a worldwide trend” mobile PC shipments are forecast to grow and capture market share from desktop PCs in China, from 29 million units in 2010 to 70 million in 2013. So the logic is that China will follow the rest of the world, go mobile and therefore this will be the figure it ends up with.

However, we are beginning to question if there is the big boom in mobile that people are claiming. True the use of smartphones has gone up and Apple is able to sell tablets, but that is hardly a big boom. It is happening more in the US than in civilized countries, where everyone is a little more worried about their economies.

In fact smart money is saying that PC use in China and India will grow largely untouched by the mobile revolution. In india PC sales are growing but no one is buying tablets.